Hide and Seek
by oneperfectfit
Summary: Something hangs heavy in the air between them, bringing forth uncomfortable silences and numerous awkward moments, of which there are far too many to count. Kakashi and Sakura play games, find each other, and fall in love as they should. Kakasaku, oneshot


**Um. I don't know what this is. At all. Except it started out as a single sheet of looseleaf that I was scribbling on in literally size 6 pt font. I don't know where the signle sheet of looseleaf with both sides covered in scribbled KakaSaku ness is, but I typed it up on my computer, reread it, thought it was okay, and here it is. Long paragraphs and practically nonexistant dialogue and all, I think that it is alright. And long. And a one-shot. Alright. Tell me what you think, if you can make it all of the way through? **

They always manage to find each other again. It is like a strangely convoluted game of hide and go seek. But she is never quite sure who is being lost and who is being found, or who is being tricked out of their hiding spot by the other. She is not sure, either, who is looking for what. Maybe's she's already been lost, or maybe he's already been found. Or maybe it is the other way around and she loses him just as he finds her, either by accident or on purpose. It is almost the ultimate cliché of forbidden love except it is not so much forbidden as it is a denial by them both.

Something hangs heavy in the air between them, bringing forth uncomfortable silences and numerous awkward moments, of which there are far too many to count. They both hide between heavy guards, walls, bricks and mortar built of heartaches over painful deaths and denial, unrequited feelings and stomped on crushes, walls of insults thrown by each other _at _each other as they try to halt anything forming between them before it starts.

There are other people, there are other days and nights, there are other kisses. There are many almost-loves, all of those who were thrown aside in favor the intricately formed game that they play. They have their reasons, all of which are different. Age is one barrier, one that easily could be broken except for the fact that it is _such_a good excuse. She does know that he has lingering feelings that it is improper, but these feelings are ones that she tries to ignore altogether.

The barriers are there created by choice, the so called reasons lies to themselves, lies to each other, lies to everyone around them, all of their friends and rivals. They are feeble, silly, and_ pointless_. She knows that they are no excuse even as both he and she use them _as_ their excuse, time after time after time and time again. It is an oft repeated mantra, their list of rationalizations and justifications for the labyrinth that they restlessly pace.

There have been times between them. There have been many kisses filled up with barely contained passion or anger, love or hatred, gentleness or hatred, anguish and self loathing. There have been too many heated looks and glances to even attempt to keep a tally of them all. There have almost even been nights, encounters averted by one or the other of them, one person suddenly filled with the feelings that it won't contain any magic, usually her: ""no here, not now, not tonight," she will whisper, kissing him again and again but without the urgency, or the other person filled to the brim with and smelling of guilt, usually him: ""I can't, I couldn't, I would be taking advantage of you here and it's not proper or right of me to do so," even as she tells him forcefully that she is not a virgin, that she hasn't even been one for three years and that he wouldn't be taking anything oat all from her, that there is not anything important for him to take, that there isn't anything of that sort that he can even _take _from her anymore.

But there is always something despite that amount of want and _need _amassed in their bodies that urges them apart from each other, saving them and yet eventually damning them to collision. It will happen sometime, she knows this, he knows this, but they willingly pick the issue apart, attempting to stop destiny and alter fate, hoping against hope that they will be able to manage to do so even though they know in their hearts that they cannot, will not even if they do try their hardest.

To him she is untouchable. She is very fragile, even though she can punch through walls and she will never forget her memory of him looking up dumbly, completely and utterly astounded at her sixteen year old self as she looked down upon his face half-buried in clods of never turned over earth. Be he doesn't remember this, or maybe he has a selective memory, and so she is as delicate as the porcelain statures some wealthy people have on display in their houses on mahogany shelves. This, she thinks, is why he is under the illusion that he would be taking advantage of her in some way. Maybe it is her youth in comparison with his age (although it's not exactly like he's really _old_) or maybe it is simply something else, something else that keeps them apart.

She doesn't know what and she won't and can't ask him for an answer, but it nags at her as she lies awake at midnight in her bed, staring at her cracked, peeling ceiling and watching shadows dances across the canvas it provides for the winds blowing about the trees outside her apartment. To him, she is untouchable, and it confuses her as there is nothing more that she wants than his touch on her face, her whole entire being. She just needs it.

And so they play their game, and so they play their game, and so they play their game.

And she wonders if or when they will finally end it. When the strangeness of their relationship will end and it will then begin to be like one of her or Ino's old romance novels that they would read together. Really, it doesn't seem like it will be anytime soon. All of the almost do not form anything; they just worsen things between them in a certain way. They just hold the wild animals back in all these cages but the cages are cages with rusty and missing bars. Control is only a state of mind, perhaps, and while both he and she are strong, firm, almost unwavering, sometimes control can just completely slip away- just like that. And then, when it leaves, they know that this particular control will never come back. They know that they will then have finally lost it, lost that control for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. There is a deep, dark, very well hidden part in both of them that aches to lose control, to lose, lose, lose it _now _but their minds are currently fairly stronger than the directions that their hearts send out. The cold comfort and harsh safety of heartache and unfulfilled desire are something that they are trying to prefer for themselves. They are more lies piling up in a heap, not that it even matters anymore because under the bone crushing weight of all of those lies, the burdensome load of each and every one of them all together will collapse. Their control already has cracks in it, although the cracks have not yet connected in the middle to shape a breaking point. But it is known that cracks grow and spread while the strength and resolve weakens. It is a losing battle but no one likes to lose, even when the loss would be so much sweeter than any victory that might come of this game. They don't like to lose at all, but sometimes you do. Everyone loses occasionally. And sometimes, that loss tastes better than the win. It is sweeter, tangier, and maybe you won by losing after all.

And then they lose control. It slides away easily, quietly, even almost naturally. Finally, she realizes, the time is right. The time is now. It is the perfect time and it is filled with the magic that she feels like she needs to have. And he sees her as the person that she is, not the helpless little girl that she was who was obsessed with her silly little crush on an uninterested boy who thought she was useless and got in the way, that girl that she was eight years ago when he first met her, when he was still her teacher. Now, she has grown up, she had a while ago, and he sees for who she really is. His mental picture has extended and changes over the years but somehow it was also still stuck with the snapshot of her as a twelve year old girl. But now, that picture seems to all but have disappeared, replaced by a portrait of her right here, right now. Even in their stolen moments together he had seemed to thought of it a little and she could usually detect the slight hesitancy hidden behind his lips, detached from the other feelings filling him up. You don't kiss your student like that, he is thinking. You don't think of her like that, you don't, you don't, you simply don't. But he does. And then he realizes that she is not his student anymore, she is not his student now and it all comes pouring out, everything until nothing, nothing left.

It is fire and ice that first night, two contrasts against each other,. She is not drunk, he is not drunk, they are in control. They have completely lost their control but they are in it at the same time. It is an interesting paradox.

The first kiss is desperate, grasping hunger as if they should seize the opportunity now before there is no time left. The second kiss is more of a brush, even more stolen, more yearning and want for the person next to them, gentle and yet more terrifying to her than the first kiss was. The third kiss, the fourth one, the fifth one, the sixth are brief, quick, as if to reassure their self that the person next to them is still with them. Touch makes her shiver, his touch that she has wanted for so long to feel on her, all over her body, everywhere and only one thing at once. Who was hiding this time and who found who this time, she wonders, and then realizes that it doesn't matter at all. They are both here, both present, both together in all senses, in both body and mind. "Finally," she whispers and he nods slightly. The word finally perfectly sums up the ending of their wait, their journey, the odd game that they have been playing together, against each other. And it is an end to the_idiocy _coating all of this, she realizes. There is another kiss and she laughs, giddy, exhilarated, thrilled. She remembers when she was little and she would go and pick a flower and then pluck the petals off of it, chanting breathlessly "he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not," She meant Sasuke then, but now it feels more like it would be him.

"Hi," she whispers, leaning her head in against his, forehead to forehead. She can feel his chest moving, feel his breath. For the moment, this is hers and she is his. All this she can touch, she can grasp. She takes a deep breath and releases it, out of breath from all of the fervent, fevered kissing. Her lips must be swollen, bee-stung and bruised. She is sure she is flushed, and he is. She pulls down his mask and he makes no move to stop her.

For a moment she has no clue who she is looking at. It is Kakashi, but it is not Kakashi. She is kissing a stranger, has been kissing a stranger. This handsome stranger reaches a hand and strokes her cheek. She sighs and he morphs back into Kakashi before her eyes. She needed to get used to it, she supposes. His face, his _really nice _face thrills her, all the way down her body, traveling heat. She kisses him on his lips, finally, finally. His arm rests around her waist while the other travels through her short locks of hair, finger-combing it all so it hangs, mussed, around her ears.

"Hello," he replies and smiles. She kisses him again. "Hi."

…..

She lies next to him, observes the way the fading moonlight gilds his features. She traces the scar over his eye and smiles a little bit, one side of her mouth, as he mumbles something and then flips over, capturing her with an arm. She curls up next to him like a cat, seeking his warmth and body.

It is a fitting end, she thinks. It is the happy ending that she has always sought, from the fairytales her mother told her, to the princes on white horses she and Ino would dream and giggle about, to the throaty, gasping heroines and handsome, rakish men from the romance novels she and Ino read. They had happy endings too. Her game, his game, they were strange, more of a mystery novel, a chase scene than a romance. There was nothing keeping them apart but themselves. This is clearer now than it was before, simply translucent. She kisses his forehead and half-awake, he strokes her arm. They are together, rightfully so. It is x equals y, a equals b, a simple mathematical equation where the final step has been solved.

They are together, and it is more than enough.

Kakashi wakes up completely, not caught in that drowsy net he was in earlier. He kisses her and she succumbs. Love is strange, twisting around your hearts until it is surrounded and you must admit surrender. Love is trilling and painful, piecing a heart together before ripping out the raw stitches and then grinding it into the ground with a high heeled stiletto shoe. But right now, she thinks that she is in love. He knows that he is in love, even though he has tried to suppress it for so long, tried to halt the feelings from filing his throat until he might choke on them.

Love.

She likes that word, likes that feeling. Love.

Kakashi. Love.

Their game is done. They have both been found. Both were lost, and now both have been found. They have found each other, even though, she thinks, they were both there all along. They were just so _blind_of to what was in front of them. Their little twisted game is over and she is happy. He is happy.

"The end," she murmurs under her breath. Kakashi doesn't reply, just watches her from under heavily lidded dark eyes. He can practically read her mind, she thinks. He knows what she means. Because he loves her, too.

The End.


End file.
